Testing of newly manufactured products is done to ensure that the product conforms to its operating specification requirements. Depending on the type of product, various testing techniques are used. For example, for hardware devices, such as printed circuit boards, specific test fixtures are created that provide an input stimulus and monitor outputs of the device for proper responses. If, for each of the input stimulus, the output is as anticipated, the printed circuit board passed the test.
Automated test equipment is generally used to test integrated circuits, such as microprocessors, microcontrollers, video graphic processors, etc. Such automated test equipment is a generic device that, based on a customized test program, can test most integrated circuits. To develop the customized test program, the simulated design verification suite of the integrated circuit is utilized to create a virtual environment for the integrated circuit to be tested. As is known, the simulated design information suite is based on the hardware description language (HDL) that was used to design the integrated circuit. While the automated test equipment, which is a general purpose tester, provides flexibility such that various integrated circuits may be tested, it is generally a costly piece of equipment (e.g., approximately $2 Million Dollars U.S.). In addition, the development of the customized test program is somewhat time consuming, which adds additional costs to the overall automated testing process.
As an alternative to using automated test equipment, a dedicated test fixture may be designed that simulates the real environment in which the integrated circuit will be used. For example, for a microprocessor, the test fixture may include a motherboard operably coupled into a personal computer. By exercising the integrated circuit under test in this manner, the human tester may coordinate and/or customize the individual testing of an integrated circuit. While this technique works well for specific integrated circuits, it requires a substantial amount of human interaction, which may lead to error and is generally much slower than an automated process. However, the specific manual test fixtures are generally much less expensive than the automated test equipment.
Therefore, a need exists for an automated specific test environment for testing specific circuits, including integrated circuits with the cost savings of specific test fixtures but still providing the flexibility of automated test equipment.